No Mutants Allowed - A History of Fallout Fandom

January 31st, 2007, 22:14

Stung by regular snide comments on the Fallout fanbase from various mass media quarters, NMA has the first part of a potentially controversial article titled Glittering Gems of Hatred - Eleven Angry Guys on a Website. This first part is mainly history and setup and it will be interesting to see if the remaining parts deny or justify the stereotype:

Rumors about Fallout 3 being in production had been bouncing around like wildfire in the early months of 2000. On May 7, 2000, BIS&#39; David Hendee noted "Fallout 3 is not currently under production." (ref). On May 11, 2000, Interplay announced Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. The initial reaction was worded well by Miroslav: "I&#39;m a bit confused here. I won&#39;t talk anymore but wait to see more about this." This initial confusion was caused by the fact that everyone had been waiting for Fallout 3 and a lot of people still believed BIS&#39; "secret project" was in fact Fallout 3. However, if you scroll through the news archives going on from May 2000 (ref), you will find interest rose, especially after Fallout 1 developer Chris Taylor was revealed to be tied to the game. The NMA archives of this time do not reflect completely the fan reaction, as the game was being covered much more intensely elsewhere, especially on Duck and Cover.

I can't think of any good IP that has been repeatedly shit on in the past 8 years like Fallout. I can't think of any other IP with two great installments where the industry just steadfastly refuses to make a third game in the same style. NMA may be too close-minded or intolerant of differing styles of games, but any fanbase would react this way if their favorite game series were murdered and corpse-raped in this manner. Can you imagine how pissed off Halo fans would be if Bungie cancelled Halo 3 and decided to make a Halo card battle game for the Nintendo DS instead? They'd be downright furious.

Originally Posted by doctor_kaz
Can you imagine how pissed off Halo fans would be if Bungie cancelled Halo 3 and decided to make a Halo card battle game for the Nintendo DS instead? They'd be downright furious.

But they did not cancel Metal Gear Solid, did they? Have never liked the series, but I believe they did a good job on the trading card game? Unlike the stuff they did on the other Fallout game (well, I didn't like FO2 as a matter of fact and never had the thing for squad based tactical games … though Desperados had a good story, but the difficulty was extreme for me, and I quite liked the Robin Hood game by the same developers).

Another thing is that there has not been a successful spiritual succesor to Fallout to fill in the void left since it came out. Most of the games that came out pretending to be in the same niche turned out half-bad, if not bad outright as to what I hear.

Originally Posted by Arma
But they did not cancel Metal Gear Solid, did they?

No, it was a pretty lousy analogy … but since he mentioned the card game thing … But there *was* an uproar when the series was coming to the PSP as a card game - until they final did the action game in December.

Originally Posted by txa1265
No, it was a pretty lousy analogy … but since he mentioned the card game thing … But there *was* an uproar when the series was coming to the PSP as a card game - until they final did the action game in December.

Analogies like that still work, but I think there's more to consider when you look at the Fallout fanbase and series. It's not a simple one-two punch of "Fallout fans are angry because of how they were treated". That does not explain why Brotherhood of Steel flopped nor why Tactics was the most pre-ordered game in Interplay history.

Nor does it explain the acceptance many fans showed when Sawyer was "innovating" the Fallout series.

I have to say the fanbase turns me off quite a bit. They are not happy unless they're destroying anything that isn't Fallout. And they use Fallout as a crutch. which to base everything else. They seem to be most fixated on the baser side of the game as well.

The devs noticed as well which is one of the reasons they stopped reading their own forums in many cases. Many of them have been turned off in that no matter what kind of game they make this fanbase will give them bad, bad press. I for one wasn't impressed by the screenshots on FO3 that surfaced from the BIS devs after they finally left. It looked like a lot of recycling and nothing innovative at all. Its no wonder why so many publishers haven't wanted to go near it.

And, for the record here, I'm harping on the noisy fanbase here. I love the game itself. I was really, really happy when I found the language and graphic filter. Steve Jackson was to Fallout what Nickelodeon was to Spummco when they did Ren and Stimpy. Without some control it just wouldn't doesn't worked. I hope BS can learn a lesson from that.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
I have to say the fanbase turns me off quite a bit. They are not happy unless they're destroying anything that isn't Fallout. And they use Fallout as a crutch. which to base everything else. They seem to be most fixated on the baser side of the game as well.

The devs noticed as well which is one of the reasons they stopped reading their own forums in many cases. Many of them have been turned off in that no matter what kind of game they make this fanbase will give them bad, bad press.

These and many more predictable recycled arguments to be debunked in the coming week!

Man, I love free advertisments.

Yeah, we totally never had good dev interaction! Did you even read the article the newspost linked to or did you just decide to comment out of the blue?

Your shock that a Fallout fansite would put other games below the game they are dedicated to is understandeable, though. Jeesh, talk about peripheral vision.

The devs noticed as well which is one of the reasons they stopped reading their own forums in many cases. Many of them have been turned off in that no matter what kind of game they make this fanbase will give them bad, bad press

Come on, go read the article before you say those things ok? But your post is important to reinforce the need to understand the myths surrounding the FO community and to better show the actual events that took place in the last (almost 10) years, and what are just misconceptions. A critical eye is always important, good work Kharn.

We of course all have pentacles in our social preferences which other interactions are measured by, this is the way the human brain works, learns and grows, doesn’t matter if it’s a game, sport team, music style, literature, science, medicine or human rights.

I have certainly heard of worst choices than Fallout, heck doctor-kaz even mentioned one Halo, apologies to all the Halo fans, well sort of.

— Trust me, most of the names I have been called you can't translate in any language…they're not even real words as much as a succession of violent images.

I think that there are other significant factors in this as well. As someone else pointed out earlier, not only has there not been a Fallout 3, there hasn't been a remotely decent spiritual successor to the game since then either. Combine this with Black Isle and Troika leaving the business, Deus Ex: Invisible War being a disaster, and Bioware essentially abandoning the PC and what you have is a very dismal period for single player PC RPG's. Fallout is only badly outdated in its graphics, and maybe a bit in the interface, so it's extremely frustrating that nobody has even tried to make a faithful Fallout 3. What you have, basically, is a perfect shitstorm for somebody who's favorite game was Fallout.

Originally Posted by Briosafreak
[…]But your post is important to reinforce the need to understand the myths surrounding the FO community and to better show the actual events that took place in the last (almost 10) years, and what are just misconceptions. A critical eye is always important, good work Kharn.

I'm just amazed that the FO community is such an important part of history that myths have actually grown out of it.
Keep up the good work, boys !

Originally Posted by Cormac
I'm just amazed that the FO community is such an important part of history that myths have actually grown out of it.
Keep up the good work, boys !

Haha…

Yeah, dude. Didn't you know that 'Rage against the machine' was a Fallout fan band? Or that the CIA is secretly observing Fallout fans as a threat to the system? Or that there is a secret order for police officers across the world to shoot Fallout fans on sight? I mean they're sooo important and sooo armed and sooo dangerous (especially EXTREMELY dangerous) that the system doesn't have any other choice, you know? You gotta shoot first and ask questions later with these extremely angry and dangerous (oh, and important) people. You thought Al-Qaida was a pain in the ass? Just wait. Fallout fans will bring on the apocalypse so they can, like, really get into it and live their game after the event. Mark my words, dude. These guys are greater than life. We're all fucked and d00med!!!

Originally Posted by xSamhainx
I wish that they would just drop this ridiculous air of importance about the whole thing.

There is no importance in anything but what people attach to it. This makes your remark as meaningless as it is predictable.

Seriously, why do people say things like "you people think it's way too important" or "big deal" or "stop pretending it matters". Such remarks are meaningless, they will never add anything to any discussion.

Hmmm…Very post-modernist I guess. The remarks and thoughts may be true, but they have no practical value or consequences whatsoever. Barking into the wind, I guess?